GDC: Bungie's Next Game Is An MMO

Share.

UPDATED: Unless they're joking.

By Ryan Geddes

At a panel session at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today, Bungie lead network engineer David Aldridge confirmed to attendees that the developer's next title is a "massively multiplayer action game."

Rumors about the game have bounced around the internet in recent weeks, with anonymous sources describing the new project as "WoW in space." At his talk, titled "I Shot You First: Networking the Gameplay of Halo: Reach," Aldridge specifically noted that the title is not "WoW in space." So there you have it.

The still-untitled game series will be published by Activision, and it's the first non-Halo project the studio has worked on since joining Microsoft to release Halo: Combat Evolved. This isn't the first time a Bungie rep has mentioned that the studio was interested in making a persistent online game. In answer to a fan's query about the upcoming project during a 2010 GDC session, Bungie's Joseph Staten responded by asking, "Wouldn't it be great if we could make a world that was always there for you?"

Looks like Bungie is answering its own question.

UPDATE: In a post on Bungie.net following Aldridge's GDC speech, a company rep said the MMO reference was intended to be a joke on a slide. Our editor attended Aldridge's talk, and notes that the "massively multiplayer" bit was spoken, not on a slide. She also reports that no one in the audience laughed. That, however, does not mean he wasn't joking. Having never heard Aldridge's material before, we can't accurately judge. We reached out to Bungie and Activision immediately after the GDC talk for clarification, but have not yet received a response.